Once in a Lifetime
by Feral Phoenix
Summary: Two months after losing the one she loved, Lisa is found working in a sleazy nightclub as a whore, engaged to a stranger. After having lost so much, can she make the right choice when she is offered the chance to do it over? Complete!
1. Barren

Once in a Lifetime

DISCLAIMER: Don't own it, so don't you even THINK of suing me.

"Hey, Heartbreaker! HEARTBREAKER! Get your lazy ass down here, the show's on!"

A flicker of reason briefly lit her empty umber eyes, and she stood, tracing slowly towards the back entrance to the stage.

Nearly blinded by the flashing strobelights, nearly deafened by the crashing, bass-heavy music, she did as she was told.

The clothing, or rather, the lack of it still felt strange to her. It had only been two months since they'd took her in off the streets, and she still hadn't fully recovered--perhaps that was why. The black, fetish-wear-influenced halter came dangerously close to baring the soft nipples of her breasts; would have, if she hadn't dropped at least a size during the days she could barely remember. The plastic beads attached to her garters swished and clicked when she moved; it was mildly bothersome. Beneath the garter belt itself, she wore nothing. No matter what the Mothers did, nothing could be done for her unruly, chin-length black hair; nothing could be said for it except the fact that it completely hid the single piercing in her left ear, disguised the silver droplet that was the only thing still precious to her.

Two simple months in the club had made all the difference. Even her own family and friends... even _he _wouldn't recognize her anymore. The days of weeping, the days she had taken a blunt knife to her own beautiful raven-black tresses, were over, and with them, the last traces of her old self had died.

Her blank eyes told the story all too well. She was Dead, her mind and heart rapidly retreating to the realm beyond feeling. She needed only for her body to follow them.

But it was time for her to go onstage.

The reminiscing could wait.

The other girls were already gathered around the exit, looking collectively ruffled and pleased with themselves, the most conservatively clothed among them half-naked. Their unofficial leader, a tough young woman named Fuuko, pushed through the huddle to her, planting both hands on overwide hips.

"Heartbreaker, there you are. Don't forget--twenty percent of the earnings go straight to the Mothers, alright?"

She nodded. "...Yes..."

Fuuko smiled crookedly and ruffled her hair. "You thinkin' about your man again?"

She said nothing. She never had to. Fuuko knew already.

"Don't, hon, you know what men are. They use you, then they leave you. It never fails. All a man wants is a woman's body... that's how we use _them _here, understand?"

Fuuko and the others had never asked what had driven her to the streets. They had all come to the unanimous assumption that she had just lost the love of her life. Of course, being what they were, their vision of "lost" was much different from the truth.

And what could she tell them, anyway?

"He died saving Wonderland"? "I owe him my life"? That would go down well.

"So, you go do what you do best, miss Lisa Heartbreaker. Get yourself a douchebag and forget him tonight. You're a natural at this, so go take care of you."

The announcer thundered out their names, and Lisa Heartbreaker, nightclub whore, paraded onstage with the others.

Her blank, uncomprehending eyes and too-empty hands found the silver pole, and she went to it, her body automatically adding an extra sashay to her hips as she walked. She could hear the moans, sighs, and whistles from the exclusively male audience as their collective eyes nailed themselves to her rear end. Caressing the metal, she fell instantly into a swoon, edging her hips towards the rod that connected floor and ceiling. Taking her cues from the thrumming floor beneath her--her ears had long succumbed to the actual sounds drilling into them--she drew closer, crossing her ankles on the other side of the pole, falling far enough backwards to brush the back of her hand against the floor before pulling herself up. After so long, it was just something she did instinctively; she felt nothing as she ran her hands over her own body, thought nothing as she slipped her own fingertip into herself except to belatedly gauge the audience's reaction.

They were eating it up, of course; each of them probably wished it was their finger that got to explore her. Or the hot shafts of flesh that were most likely straining to break through the respective flies of their respective pants.

She would have a line tonight, or perhaps even an all-night customer.

The dance was over before she realized it; she only noticed when she took the folded wad of bills from the hand of a man who seemed to be both foreign and as drunk as a drunk could get.

To her eyes, his features blurred; they didn't matter, anyway.

She didn't think Fuuko was completely correct. Perhaps some of the others were able to use the men they slept with, but with her, it always seemed that she ended up being used. They did what they liked with her; she took it without comment. It all felt the same to her nearly-numbed body, anyway.

The waking dreams would always come to steal the mild pangs of pleasure away.

---

This was one who preferred to keep most of his clothes on, noted the part of Lisa Heartbreaker's mind that still noticed those things.

No foreplay was needed, really, since he was already aroused and she couldn't care less, but he began to kiss her anyway, his hands finding a fumbling grip on her breasts.

She let him. It didn't do much for her, but probably helped to convince him that this was some perfectly rational night with a wife or lover, not a paid prostitute in the back of a seedy nightclub. He wasn't even a bad kisser anyway.

But it wasn't this man's lips she was feeling, though they covered her own...

No, a firmer, more familiar pair were pressed to hers in her mind...

_Both of them were breathing hard, faces flushed in the darkness as they fumbled with each other's clothes. Perhaps it was just the look in his eyes, but she had known instinctively that he had wanted the same thing she did._

_So here they were on the floor, and here her hands were, finding the courage to venture places her hands had never been before, reveling in his surprise and pleasure at her competency._

_Even as she explored the feel of him, most of her attention was focused on their interlocked lips._

_For a man with such an aversion to human contact, he sure could kiss._

_And kiss..._

_And kisssss..._

_Barely letting her come up for air, he slipped his tongue into her mouth, teasing her own, shaping her life with his unexpected skill. She was vaguely aware that his left hand, finished with her dress, had come up to cup her right breast; her awareness became less vague as he slowly drew his finger back and forth across the nipple, making the flesh pucker and harden. She whimpered as heat flashed through her blood; reaching blindly, she felt her fingertips brush against metal, and hearing his low groan of desire, turned the accidental touch into a shaky stroke._

_He shuddered against her, his tough lean body pressing heavily against hers. Not knowing what else to do, she yielded as he came for her._

_The sharp, savage plunge into her ripped a startled cry from her lungs; the ecstasy burning her from the inside out pulled her back into an arch, bringing his second thrust even deeper as her legs wound around his solid waist. He shifted his lips from hers to her collarbone, then her breasts as she pleaded in a low desperate voice for more. Bracing himself with his hand on her lower back, he drove deeper still, tearing pleasure, then pain into her flesh. She cried his name over and over, shuddering; he murmured husky, velvet apologies, helpless to stop._

_She trembled beneath him, awed simply by the way their shining bodies locked perfectly together, put through worlds of agony as he reached so deeply inside her that he felt the pain as well, his kisses speaking of his contradicting dual nature--the gentleness, the savagery. The want and the denial. The man who had needed her love, and the beast who had needed her body. The sharp cerulean eyes that seemed more human now than ever before, filled with some emotion she couldn't understand. The spicy taste and scent of him, powerful and alluring. The soft tendrils of rich mahogany and chestnut that traced over her bare shoulders. And even more, the uncontrollable shudders wracking _his _body. He felt it, just as she did._

_Running to exhaustion, he finally pulled back, collapsing over her, their bodies still intertwined. Weakly, she put her arms around him, wondering at the look of her paler arms over his deep tan skin._

_And just like that--her virginity, her innocence, was gone._

_And silent, powerful Kaze was helpless in her arms._

As he withdrew, the vision faded, leaving her heart aching in its wake.

Her body was tired, but it was her mind that wanted to sleep and never come back to the surface. She would go under silently, and drown.

But life never worked that way.

Which was why she was here, a drunken stranger asleep upon her, a whore in a nightclub, when Lisa Pacifist had died two months ago.

Her futile existence just kept spiraling on.

(TBC)


	2. Continuous Spiral

Once in a Lifetime

See disclaimer in Part 1

Nausea was a clenched fist in Lisa's abdomen when she took her first blank, groggy blinks of light that morning.

Feeling the roll and surge of her stomach, she thought bleakly, _Not again, _and wriggled from beneath her still-sleeping client to the wastebasket in the corner of the bare room.

Black thoughts festered in her still-murky mind as she retched and choked. This had to be the third time that week that she'd awakened to an unexplainable feeling of sickness; sometimes it happened during the day, too. _Now _what? It wasn't enough that she'd lost everything and now lived the most despicable life possible, but she was getting sick as well? That was just all she needed.

"Are you alright?"

The unfamiliar voice first made her flinch, but she relaxed when she realized that it must be her client. She'd wakened him. More fun.

She flinched again as his hands found her shoulders, steadying her, and pulled back her hair from her face. "Have you been drinking?"

Lisa gave him an evil look from behind the glaze of loss, then heaved again.

"Right..." Awkwardly, he shrugged; though she wasn't looking, she could feel his movement. "Ah. I'm... Colin Byrne. I'm visiting my cousin here from Europe."

So he was a foreigner. Well, his Japanese couldn't be faulted. "Lisa Heartbreaker," she replied shallowly, before she had to duck over the wastebasket again.

"Listen, if there's something you need..." Colin Byrne said hesitantly, letting the sentence trail.

"No," Lisa rasped, trying to force the bile back down her throat.

"Lie down," the European visitor insisted, leading her back to the bed and recovering his boxer shorts along the way. "I'll go see if I can get you help..."

"No," Lisa protested weakly, then swallowed hard. Colin Byrne was already out of the room.

Damn.

How much worse could this morning get?

---

Apparently _far _worse, she discovered as an angry Fuuko slammed into the room.

The woman was alone, thank the gods that Lisa had lost faith in. Apparently Mr. Colin Byrne had taken his holier-than-thou self off. But just one of Fuuko was bad enough.

Nailing Lisa with a glare far more evil than any she'd been nailed with for quite some time, she waved a rectangular white box beneath the black-haired woman's nose. Although it was trembling along with Fuuko in her rage, Lisa could still read the print along the side. It said PREGNANCY TEST.

"How long have you been having morning sickness?" Fuuko demanded.

"It's... just a stomach cold..." Lisa said softly, but Fuuko glowered and she fell silent, knowing it was no use.

"Stomach flu, my ass. If it was stomach flu, you would be too incapacitated to work! Don't you know what a CONDOM is for! The kami give me patience, girl, you are a piece of work and a half!"

Lisa gave Fuuko a look that stated quite firmly that she did not go against company policy, thank you very much. All customers were handed condoms when they walked in, just in case they wanted to hire a dancer out afterwards.

"Have you been having unprotected sex lately, then?"

Lisa stared. What in the world was Fuuko thinking? It wasn't as if she had a personal life at all... she never even left the...

Oh.

Fuuko was asking about _before._

Come to think of it, neither she nor Kaze had used any protection.

So yes, she'd had unprotected sex "lately".

She'd had a _lot _of unprotected sex "lately".

Seeing the look on Lisa's normally apathic face, Fuuko held out the test. "You go and do this right this minute, and I want to see it when you're done. And I mean _now. _This is important."

Knowing there would be no getting out of this, Lisa sighed, took the thin cardboard box between two fingers, and trudged off to the nearest bathroom.

Once your life started going down the drain, it never seemed to stop.

---

Just thinking about the little red dot made her want to die.

Fuuko had commiserated, told her that she'd have a maternity leave, of course. But a leave to go where? To do what?

The only income she had was brought in by selling her own body. And if she couldn't do that...

Then she would be right back where she'd started, roaming the streets without any idea as to where to go or what to do.

At first she had thought she would abort the baby, but...

Just thinking of Kaze had made her decide against it. This human life forming inside her was all she would have of him now. How could she not want, _need, _to keep it? She would do her best, try to do right by him.

She would fail, but she would try.

She could only hope that she would have Fuuko's help with her in this as well.

Two months ago, it was Fuuko who had found her, wandering the streets, a frail, starving waif in such a state of despair that she had seemed only inches from death. It was Fuuko who had moulded the broken soul of Lisa Pacifist into the tougher, less emotional shell of Lisa Heartbreaker, Fuuko who had brought her into the field of prostitution. Fuuko was the reason she was alive.

A meager life it was, but she was alive.

Without Fuuko's guidance, Kaze's loss would surely have killed her.

What with Kaze's battle-dependent nature, she should've known it would be inevitable, but the truth was, she herself had come to depend on him. She trusted him. She ached for him. At first she had tried to tell herself that it was just the sex, but after the first few weeks, she'd broken down and admitted it: She loved him. And he had sacrificed himself, he had _died, _right in front of her.

The resulting burst of energy had somehow propelled her back to the streets of Sadogashima, where she lived out her bleak existence now.

As for the others, who knew? Ai and Yu, their parents... perhaps they'd gotten out of Wonderland, perhaps not. The members of the Comodeen had all been murdered by Chaos, before they'd been captured; little Lou was dead, had died in her arms. Brave, gentle, tragic Makenshi had met his horrific fate with Kaze, right in the end of everything.

Almost everyone was dead.

And the Hayakawas? Even if they'd made it back, they wouldn't recognize her anymore. Lisa Pacifist was long gone... yet another victim in the battle against Chaos.

So here she was, a whore in a shabby room, nothing to her name but Kaze's silver earring, pregnant, almost penniless, wanting to break down and sob but completely unable, lost to the world.

The knock at her door startled her, but she rasped "come in" anyway.

Fuuko peeked inside. "You have a client tonight," she said, sounding amused. "Apparently you made a great hit with him before. A Mr. Colin Byrne bought you out again."

The foreigner, features blurred as always, headed in meekly; Fuuko closed the door behind him.

"Hello," he said awkwardly.

She simply stared at him, nonplussed.

"I was a little concerned for you," he continued. "Are you really sure you're al--"

Sighing, Lisa swung herself up, yanked off her shirt, and walked up to him, yanking the fly of his pants open when they were nose-to-nose.

"You're serious about this, aren't you?" he asked, laughing nervously as her blank eyes roved over his face.

"It would cost me my job," she stated simply.

"Alright, alright, we'll talk later," he said, clearly uneasy with where her hands were going.

As he took her to the bed, the images came again, vivid and lifelike as ever.

_On the second night, as Miles was down in the engine room performing a round of all-night maintenance with Cid and some of the others, Kaze came to her._

_He was a masterful lover, seeming to know every nuance of her body even better than she did. The feel of his lips and tongue on her throat and breasts never failed to make her squirm with pleasure. And he clearly wanted her as badly as she did him. The rush of his breath, the rapid rise and fall of his ribcage as he loved her told her that much, and her heart soared with bliss when he was inside her._

_They slept entwined beneath the soiled sheets of her bed, his arm tight around her shoulders as hers were around him, her nose buried in his hair, the stains of his semen drying on her thighs. Somehow, he managed to be back in the main hall before Miles arrived. Lisa offered to do the laundry that day, to make sure the others wouldn't find out._

_After that, they would meet as they could. If Miles was in her room, Lisa would go to him, and they would make love in the openness of the empty chamber, their only audience the schools of bright bizarre fish that populated Wonderland's oceans. If not, Kaze would come for her, and they would explore each other's bodies in the warm darkness between the innocent white sheets of her bed._

_As she had found out quite by mistake on their first night together, Kaze was extraordinarily sensitive about the Magun. He could feel through its metal, it seemed, just as easily as he could feel through his own skin; his reactions when she touched it were wide and varied. If he was in a "romantic" mood, his response was almost always heavy, near-painful arousal; if not, he could possibly shy away, closing himself off, hiding behind his emotionless shell. It always amazed her how he trembled when she touched him--she could feel the gravity of it, and it made her heart glow with warmth; by letting her do so, he was placing himself in her hands, showing almost reluctantly how he trusted her._

_The Magun might be the source of his inexorable strength in battle, but when they were in bed together, it was his greatest weakness. She knew it as well as he did, and didn't exploit it; rather, she tried to use it to please him, gently grazing her fingertips along the strangely warm metal, relishing the uncontrollable shaking of his body and the low, almost whimpering moans her actions drew._

_Once they had wordlessly worked out their erratic routine and adjusted to it, Lisa found an ease, a comfort in their heated coupling. No matter what the pains of the day brought, Kaze would be there for her in the darkness, waiting._

_About a week after they had first stumbled into their relationship, Lisa found herself telling him things she had never been able to tell anyone before._

_She had no idea what made him so easy to talk to. She had no idea why she had begun to speak softly to him through the silken blackness of midnight; she only knew that something about the eternal blue of his patient, understanding cerulean eyes continued to encourage her. Once the dam broke, there was no holding back, either._

_She didn't have to smile around him. Somehow, she knew--she just didn't need to hide._

_And so, she could tell him. She could tell him why she had to pretend._

_He just watched her in silent sympathy, held her as it all came undone. And as she sobbed into the firmness of his chest, she felt his chin come to rest against the top of her head, felt his grip on her shift to become more supportive, tighter without being painful._

_He made efforts on her behalf, even though by now she was used to his silence. Eventually, she found the courage to ask him the questions she had always wanted the answers to._

_"Where did you get this?"_

_Gently, she tapped the dangling silver droplet at his left earlobe._

_Her playfulness evaporated as his eyes darkened and his grip on her tightened._

_"My sister." He would not meet her gaze. "Each of us had one."_

_"What happened to her?" she asked softly, pressing her cheek to his._

_"Died." A blunt but husky whisper, saturated with pain. "Long ago."_

_And several nights later, when the waiting had become too much for her: "Why do you hate Makenshi so much?"_

_A pause; then he replied. "I think... he killed my sister."_

_Shock; nestling closer, she probed more deeply. "You think?"_

_"Can't remember it all. But... he was the one..."_

_"So, why say you think, then?"_

_Another pause. "Sometimes... the way he speaks to me..." Kaze fell silent again; Lisa let him retreat, knowing he would tell her more when he needed to._

_Some nights, there would be no speech; he would come in a rush, then collapse into her arms, shaking violently, silent tears running down his face. She never knew why--she never asked. She held him, and kissed the shining tracks, trying to ease the silent sobs that were so much a part of Kaze's mystery._

_Perhaps she reminded him of someone he'd known._

_Before she knew it, she was in love with him._

"You're beautiful."

It was Colin Byrne's voice, so she knew the waking dream had ended.

"The other woman... Fuuko, is it... she told me you were having a hard time."

Lisa didn't answer. Trust Fuuko to spill to a stranger who seemed worried if she thought it might prod her into action. Typical.

"And if... you know, you need to get out of this place. You should come with me. I can give you a life... a place where you don't need to sell yourself to survive..."

She couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"You don't need to give me an answer right away. I'll come back tomorrow, to give you time to think. I mean..."

So this was Fuuko's brilliant plan to get her somewhere to go on maternity leave.

To live with a complete and total stranger.

Wonderful.

Sighing as she listened to Colin Byrne babbling, Lisa privately wished for the millionth time that day that the rest of her had died along with Lisa Pacifist two months ago.

(TBC)


	3. Proposals and Memories

Once in a Lifetime

see disclaimer in Part 1

_Her moans came in short, sobbing bursts as his hand closed over her breast, her chest heaving at the torturous slow forward roll of his hips against hers. With painfully heightened senses, she felt every second of the drawn-out push into her; lately their nights were all about the masochism as they did their best to confine their raging lust and hold back until they no longer could. She would beg and he would struggle for control; finally he would break and take her hard and fast until it hurt._

_He traced idle patterns on her skin, his desperate need on one breast then the other as he shifted the focus of his lips and tongue. Still he pressed forward, waiting for the slow trigger of release before rolling back._

_He kissed her throat and she gasped; she clutched his shoulders and he moaned. She couldn't stand it any longer--if he wouldn't give her what she needed, she would wreak her vengeance on him, waiting until the next night if she needed to. Tomorrow she would be the one playing with him..._

_He trembled briefly and cursed helplessly as his hips slammed into hers. She let out a tiny cry of surprise as he thrust harder, pushing deeper; it became a moan, rolling and throaty, as he kept going. It was like dominoes--getting the momentum, he just kept building speed, until her body didn't have time to register each individual crash of their hips. She cried out his name, was going to scream it, but he saved her by capturing her lips with his, silencing her in the carnal clutch of tongues._

_She still felt, and what she felt just made her need more. She wanted it--it was the pleasure in her life, the joy. The desperation and the lust was what helped her keep her head up. She was used to it, and she loved it._

_He collapsed upon her, completely spent, gasping for air._

_She tucked her face against his neck, twined her hands in his hair, and smiled._

---

Lisa blinked back to reality as the huge heavy man she'd slept with eased back, sighing, and placed a fat wad of paper money in her hand. She watched lazily as he put his clothes back on and tottered out the door.

She rarely got morning jobs, but this one was good, since the man was rich. Judging by the faint ache in her lower body, Lisa reflected that he probably hadn't been too bad, but all she had seen and felt was Kaze with her. She still flashed back to him whenever another man tried to love her.

What she should have been preoccupied with--and in some ways, still was--was Colin Byrne's unusual proposal. She needed some place to go, it was true. But living with a blurry-faced gaijin who she'd only met twice...?

And did he really only want to _live _with her? Practicality dictated that the answer was no. She was a whore, the only services she could give were sexual, and he was a man. He would want her body more than he wanted her company. She knew that all her social skills had gone down the drain with Kaze's death; she was just as much an ice cube with people as he'd been. It was the only reasonable explanation. People didn't exactly have pure, untarnished souls like this Colin Byrne seemed to own. There would be other reasons he wanted her around, she was sure of it.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been sitting and staring at the ceiling when Fuuko sauntered in, closing the door behind her.

"So, how'd it go with Handsome the other night?"

"He wants me to live with him..."

Fuuko's thin straight brows shot up in surprise. "Girl, you gonna let this chance slide by?"

Lisa just looked at her, nonplussed.

"You can get outta here! Isn't that what every girl wants?"

Lisa shrugged; her still-bare breasts flipped with the tiny motion.

"Seriously, Heartbreaker. You can get out, you can find something else to do, and you can tell Loverboy that you've had it with him a few months in. Once you get past him, you can climb back up to wherever you were until your ex-main squeeze ditched you. Don't forget. _We use the men. _And this one has a big, neon sign on his ass that screams out 'take advantage of me'."

Lisa shrugged again and curled up in the blankets.

"You've got another customer, by the way. Looks like he'll be done in a minute though."

Rolling her eyes, Lisa snuggled deeper. It was one of the worst things about her job--the idiot kids who came in just wanting to become Men, as if they thought that five seconds' worth of bad sex would do it for them.

"Don't bother to get dressed. You're the most jaded woman we've got in here. Scare him off." Grinning, Fuuko patted Lisa's shoulder and mosied out of the room.

The kid came in. Lisa fought the urge to roll her eyes. He was still wearing his uniform, for God's sake. He looked to be just barely into middle school, probably pubescent for a year or so. As Fuuko had predicted, he seemed a bit taken aback by the sight of a grown woman sitting nonchalantly on the side of a still-rumpled bed, legs crossed at the knees, wearing only a well-stained pair of lace panties.

Or perhaps it was more the perfect calm of her expressionless face, or the mix of mild boredom and annoyance in her eyes.

But business was business.

The boy was horrible. There was barely the time for a flash of

_thick moan_

_greedy nursing_

_thrust_

before it was all over. However, she did get paid. A lot. It was generally only the rich brats who came looking for professional prostitutes their first time.

The rest of the day was a lazy, customer-less blur. Lisa was bored. And when she was bored, she had more time to think. Which was usually very bad.

At times like that, she always ended up wondering how the _hell _she had not been able to find her way back to the agency.

They would've looked after her, she was certain. They'd have sent her home, kept her company, commiserated. Maybe it wouldn't have been this bad, if she'd found them. She'd have been taken care of.

But she'd found Fuuko.

And her days as an agent were long gone. No one would even recognize her if she found her way back to them and walked through the door. There was a time when Lisa Pacifist could've been saved, but now she was dead; all that remained of her was Lisa Heartbreaker, the whore who lay half-dozing with the semen stains of complete strangers all over her underclothing.

There was yet another knock; Fuuko and the stranger were back.

"He's payin too, so you know what that means," Fuuko announced, flopping down next to her on the mussed-up bed. "But first we all need to talk."

"Are you going to accept my offer?" blurry-faced Colin Byrne asked hopefully.

Fuuko's hand found its way under the covers to Lisa's thigh and pinched it.

Sighing, Lisa nodded after a long pause.

"I was afraid you wouldn't," said the gaijin. "Why?"

"My baby," Lisa replied simply. She wasn't around to mince words.

"I told you about her awkward situation," Fuuko said softly with a nod to the foreigner. If Lisa had been in a more irritable mood, it would've been her fellow prostitute's turn to get pinched. Or kicked. "She needs a place to stay, whether for maternity leave or something a little more permanent."

"I was hoping the arrangement would be of a more permanent kind," Colin Byrne murmured, his voice heavy and suggestive with things that Lisa Heartbreaker could no longer understand.

"Now that's settled, I'll leave you two... alone for a bit," Fuuko said with a wicked grin, meandering out the door.

Colin Byrne was silent, but turned to Lisa and pressed his body over hers.

"I don't just want to live with you. I want to marry you."

Lisa did not respond to the whisper. Her mind was already gone.

_After so long, they were still celebrating the little revelations, the thousands of ways their bodies could fit together. Her blood thrilled with wonder every time they made love; he was always on the cusp of some new idea, some fresh way to please her. What with his silence, one would hardly think he had such a devious mind. He would kiss her in ways she had never been kissed before, in ways she had never considered would bring her so much pleasure, in ways she'd always thought women kissed other women. She had no idea how he knew those things, but he knew them and he used them and they woke something burning, something desperate in her body. God, and the spirits--the man could _kiss.

_And as he would kiss the depths of her, he would drive her towards each peak of pleasure with the work of his hand. She'd never considered how a caress could be so torturous until she'd begun to make love to him. One would think that such a simple touch along her back or thighs or breasts wouldn't elicit such a response, but it did. He did._

_His body was beautiful. Lean and tough and sculpted and scarred but beautiful. She would stroke along the angles and planes of his back and tell him so. She knew that he felt the same way about her. He was the first man she had seen naked and she could tell that hers was the first nude body he had seen, but they both knew that nothing could compare to each other, no matter how many others they would see in their lives._

_When he told her he loved her, she knew she must be lovable. When he told her she was beautiful, she knew that her body was good enough to reach his desire. She could define herself by his awkward but heartfelt murmured compliments._

_Their love was grounded in sex but it wasn't just the sex that kept them coming back to each other every night. She knew that because she wouldn't have worried so much when he got into his daily fights otherwise. The burning ache along the line of her breastbone was something new; it was something she'd only felt with him. She loved him, even more than she wanted his body; he loved her the same way. He didn't have the words for it, but she could tell._

_With her face buried in his chest, listening to his even breathing as he slept, she could tell._

_She would love him forever. No matter what happened to her, even if he died tomorrow--she would love him forever. There would be no way she could ever let go._

_He had to stay alive... for her sake..._

And it was true. She _couldn't _let go.

Even when she was going to live with this strange new man, she couldn't let go.

She would keep on loving him--Lisa Heartbreaker, who loved no man, would always have Kaze in her heart, would always need him, even after his death.

Always.

(TBC)


	4. Halflife

Once in a Lifetime

see disclaimer in Part 1

Colin Byrne's apartment was as neat, bland, and faceless as the man himself. There were few personal items anywhere--just necessities, like a plain, ordinary bed with striped sheets, and a plain white refrigerator, and plain wooden sitting and eating tables, and plain beige carpeting, and plain off-white tiles, and plain patterned linoleum. Plain plain plain.

Colin Byrne himself was out running errands, so Lisa Heartbreaker had the house to herself. She was feeling slightly ill again, and owned very little "decent" clothing, so she had declined his offer to join him. Instead, she wanted to get used to this anonymous place that smelled faintly of cleaning solutions where she would now live.

Lounging naked on the bed, Lisa stared up at the ceiling fan. Even it lacked personality--it was as boring and unoriginal as any fan she'd ever seen. Even if nothing else could be said for it, however, the bed was certainly soft.

Gently, almost hesitantly, Lisa laid one hand on her bare lower belly. With one look, you couldn't tell the difference, but she knew her body. There was a tightness, a fullness, here that she couldn't mistake. Unlike other women, her abdomen never swelled during menstruation--there was only the explanation she already knew.

It still didn't feel quite real. Lisa Pacifist would've been terrified, but at the same time up on cloud nine. Kaze... she wasn't sure. Idly, she wondered how he would've reacted if she could've told him.

Another woman might have been afraid that he would desert her at the inconvenience, but Lisa knew better. Kaze could be selfish at times, but he had a strong sense of responsibility, and they had loved each other. All the same, considering his taciturn nature... fatherhood would have completely bewildered him. The mental image of him trying to help her care for a baby almost made her smile.

When she was plagued with illness, he would've done his best to care for her. He'd have dealt with her moods; she would have been able to draw on his strength when hers wavered. If Kaze had lived, her pregnancy would've been heaven instead of hell...

Rolling onto her side, Lisa buried her face in the slightly rumpled comforter, breathing in its bland, vaguely spearmint scent. Closing her eyes, she willed her thoughts into blankness even as her mind slipped into dreams.

---

_Their lovemaking was over; she lay sprawled over him as he rested on his back, her head on his chest. She'd grown used to the absence of a heartbeat there, and simply listened to the rhythm of his breathing as his ribcage shifted beneath her._

_Sleepy and sated, she smiled dreamily as he laid a hand on her bare shoulderblades. Tired though she was, she was still perfectly aware of his body beneath hers. Merely half an hour before, they had taken an unusual amount of time in their foreplay, making a game of removing each other's clothing, indulging in the luxury of exploring each other with roving fingertips before the primal dive of flesh into flesh. She wouldn't soon forget the flicker of wonder, of coyness as she'd let her hands roam further and further down, at the strange stiffness of the skin there. His own fingers had circled her navel and traced the line down to her groin, had teased the coarse curls of her pubic hair before he'd pulled away and kissed her, hand on her hip, listening to her faint moans of ecstasy. He had taken her then, gentle and savage as their very first night, and given her the depths of himself, riding hard until he emptied._

_It had been perfect._

_She didn't know whether or not he was asleep, but she lightly kissed the smooth, perspiration-moist skin of his tanned chest, and murmured her gratitude._

_Lying with his temporarily silenced need against her, she awaited his moment of awakening, when he would surely need her again, but was content in the quiet of the night to simply lie with him, to relish the brief peace of their momentary satisfaction._

_It might not last, but it was enough for now, and that was what mattered._

---

"Wake up."

Opening one dull umber eye, Lisa glared balefully at the blurry face of Colin Byrne. He'd been shaking her shoulder, but she'd ignored it in favor of her dream. Men always had to ruin things.

"I got you some new clothes while I was out. That Fuuko woman gave me your sizes before we left, so..."

Awkwardly, he placed a bag on the bed next to her, and left, closing the door behind him.

Sitting up and giving the spot where the gaijin had retreated another resentful look, Lisa reluctantly dumped the contents of the bag out before her. Rifling through the stack of clothing, she was forced to admit that Colin Byrne had good taste. There were white and cream blouses, dark blue and green skirts, even a two-piece outfit with stiff cloth decorated in a tiny, black-and-white houndstooth check. Staring warily at the label on the inside of the collar, Lisa vaguely recognized the brand name as a designer outlet.

Among the other clothes were strewn a few packages of white cotton panties. Lisa Pacifist might've wept with relief. No more fetish or bondage wear, no more silk and lace so heavily stained that they were no longer their original colors anywhere--plain white panties. And none had any more ornamentation than tiny satin bows fixed to the waistband.

And another surprise--plain, maternity-style underwire bras. Two of them, in size DD--a far cry from the F-cups Lisa had once been forced into. She'd lost a lot of weight; she was lucky that she didn't have any real trouble with sagging skin. But it was still a tiny blessing to have smaller breasts... it had been a source of teenage humiliation for her, while she was still in school.

Nothing orange. Lisa was glad of it. It had once been her favorite color, but not anymore. She'd been wearing her orange dress the first time Kaze had taken her clothes off--she would never wear that color again.

With a mild sigh, she ripped tags off and put on some of everything. The sizes were all perfect... small wonder; Fuuko had gotten all of Lisa's clothes back at the nightclub, and they'd all fit, too. If Fuuko had indeed given Colin Byrne her measurements, she wasn't surprised that the clothes were the right size.

Just leaving the rest of the clothes the gaijin had bought on the rumpled bed, Lisa opened the door and headed into the main room.

Colin Byrne himself was sitting on the couch, and patted the cushion beside him like he wanted her to sit with him. She stayed standing.

"It's raining," he said with a smile on his indistinct face. "Listen."

In the silence, Lisa could hear the faint patter of raindrops on the walls. It was a hollow, lonely, all-encompassing blanket of sound; if Lisa closed her eyes, she could almost believe that it was the same rain that had fallen on her family home so long ago--

A small frown creased her lips, and opening her eyes again, Lisa headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Colin Byrne asked, confounded and apparently a little angry.

"Out," Lisa said impassively.

"Why?"

"To walk."

Colin Byrne was silent. It seemed as if he was trying to find a reason to refuse and keep her to himself. "You'll catch your death of cold."

Lisa shrugged. She doubted it, but if she did, she didn't really give a damn anyway.

Colin Byrne must have realized this, for he shook his head, made an irritated noise, and said, "At least take an umbrella with you."

---

The streets of Sadogashima, with their milling crowds of people, had been washed a dull gray by the rain; Lisa Heartbreaker found the gloom strangely comforting.

She had been walking aimlessly beneath Colin Byrne's sturdy black umbrella for some time when she at last stopped at a small coffee shop--making an order, she sat beneath the sculpted buttress of the building on a stone bench with her iced latte and lazily watched the passersby.

Crowds were interesting to watch. This one had the usual assortment of businessmen on their way home from work, harrassed-looking office ladies on errands, families, homeless, and ne'er-do-wells like her roaming back and forth pointlessly. Lisa rarely caught faces, and never heard snatches of conversation--these people were put in bad moods by the rain, and wanted to get out of it as soon as possible.

Lisa enjoyed the rain. The gentle wash of water droplets was soothing, and made a beautiful sound against stone and wood and fabric and pavement. Besides, she had always felt most attuned to water out of all the elements; its vast omnipresent spirit had been a buoy of strength to her in her worst times. It still would be; however, she'd been unable to make use of her connection to Kigen since Kaze's death. After the first few weeks of vulnerability, in which she'd felt like a thin sheet of plastic had been placed between her and everything else, she'd simply grown used to it.

Staring at the thickly clouded sky, Lisa suddenly found herself thinking about Makenshi.

He'd been a right enigma, that one. When she'd first seen him, he'd been an enemy with a horrifying amount of power--enough to knock out Kaze in one clean hit--and a threat to Ai and Yu, who she was having enough trouble taking care of as it was. Her first impression of him had been very bad indeed--he'd attacked the Comodeen, after all, and Kaze hated him with a passion.

He worked for the Earl, that was certain. But unlike the Earl's four lords, Fungus, Herba, Oscha, and Pist, he didn't seem to care much for wreaking havoc or causing pain. On the contrary, he had actually warned the Comodeen _against _going to war with the Earl, telling them that they hadn't the strength to win. And the Earl had no qualms about manipulating him, even putting him through hell itself, to further his own growth of power.

Most baffling of all was the fact that to Lisa, he didn't _feel _like a threat. His spirit had the same sad, gentle feel of a hazy sky, and his softspoken, gentle manner while speaking to Kaze had betrayed his true intentions the entire time. But it was only when he'd saved Kaze's life, then everyone else's, at the risk of his own, that everything had made sense. He was on their side, and had been from the beginning.

Although the dying Lisa Pacifist had wept and wept over Kaze's fate, one thing she had never admitted to anyone was that a few of her tears had been shed for Makenshi as well. She hadn't gotten to know him, but in the end, he had been so brave, sacrificing his life in order to give Kaze the chance to defeat Chaos at long last.

Every now and then, Lisa Heartbreaker still woke from nightmares in which her mind replayed for her the horrific memory of how the Earl had speared Makenshi on his own sword.

They were almost as bad as the dreams of Kaze's sacrifice.

And while both of them had died, Lisa had just watched, too weak to be of any use at all.

She sighed, cut herself off to keep from thinking any more about it, and sipped at her coffee.

"My, how far you've fallen... Risa Hatsufiist..."

Lisa almost dropped her latte out of pure shock. She'd told _no one _in Japan that name once she'd crossed over from the mainland. So who...?

She turned to face the black-swathed girl who glared down at her out of cool, almost apathic silver eyes.


	5. Ghost of Chances Past

Once in a Lifetime

see disclaimer in Part 1

"Who are you?"

That was the disconcerting thing. This strange girl, although vaguely familiar, was definitely not someone Lisa knew on personal terms.

She was taller than the 5'5'' ex-prostitute by a good two or three inches, and her cold, lofty demeanor only helped accentuate that fact. She was dressed almost completely in black--midnight-colored cargo pants, weighted down with silver chains, low-slung on perfect hips; black, clingy middy T-shirt with a faint gray "e" inscribed over the bust; black armwarmers, decorated with a series of interlinked silver rings along the backs of the hands and laces along the inner arms; dark leather army boots, scarred with usage; iron collar that encircled her slim throat, much like the one Kaze had worn... Her hair, a thick, dull silver, was bound firmly into four braids--two framed her perfect oval face; the other two stuck up as stubbornly as if the hair had been wound around strong wire. The girl's messy bangs cascaded into her face, but did not conceal her frosty silver-gray eyes, which bored into Lisa with a distinct look of mixed disapproval and distaste. Her facial features were a little too prominent to be Japanese, but she didn't exactly look European either, as, say, Kaze and Colin Byrne did. Her lips were plush and perfect, and had been painted a perfect metallic blue, catching the light reflecting from every nearby source; her complexion was deathly pale, hardly more than white. She was cute, in a gothic sort of way, if you were into that kind of thing, but Lisa was paying more attention to the fact that she knew things she couldn't possibly know, especially considering that Lisa didn't know _her _at all.

"How far you've fallen," the strange girl repeated, blatantly ignoring Lisa's blunt question. "I expected more out of you, considering how besotted Kaze was with you. But I suppose I was wrong... you don't look at all worthy of him."

Indignation flared in Lisa's chest, even as she wondered how the _hell _this cheeky girl knew about Kaze anyway. "Don't talk about things you don't understand."

The girl folded her arms and curled her lip, now looking down her nose at the other woman with intense dislike in her eyes. "You're right, I _don't _understand. I don't have any idea where you went wrong, when you had so much good going for you. I doubt that this is where you wanted to end up when you took on that assignment to look for the Hayakawas--"

Lisa's eyes narrowed. This was altogether too suspicious. _How did she know these things?_

"Or even when you came to Japan from Russia, after completing your training in Kigenjutsu... you worked _very _hard to succeed your mother, I'm told, and achieved mastery on your own, since she was the last of her abililty level--"

Another suspicious thing, Lisa realized, was that none of the passersby even seemed to notice her... they'd at least look, at this going rate. The girl wasn't exactly bothering to keep her voice down, after all.

"Or when you had to move to Russia from China, where you were born, your mother's death fresh in your mind. I'm under the impression that she and your father taught you right from wrong, and how to make choices, even before you were introduced to the _concept _of Kigenjutsu--"

"What business is my life of yours?" Lisa asked coldly, standing up to face this bizarre girl, her iced latte completely forgotten.

"It's _your _business, and my coming here _is _about _you, _Miss Hatsufiist. Clever, by the way, to change your name--no one could trace you, once you'd gotten the agency's protection--"

"Who are you?" Lisa repeated.

"No business of yours," the girl said with a snort. "Now, tell me, before I lose my patience entirely... _where did you go wrong? _I'm not sure that Mommy's little Risa-chan came to Japan _planning _to wander the streets like a common whore... or to be one, even for a little while."

"What do you care?"

_"I _care because _you _need to start doing the right thing... if not for Kaze's sake, then for his child's. _I _care because it's my job to find out... if you discovered where you went wrong, and you had the chance to go back and change it, would you?"

_"What are you talking about? _Of course I'd change it!" Lisa exploded. "You think I _want _to be here? You think I _wanted _to watch the love of my life die right before my eyes! You think I want to live knowing my parents would be ashamed to call me their daughter, homeless and about to bear a child out of wedlock? _I never wanted this to happen!"_

"Then I'd say it would be a good idea to find out what you did wrong, wouldn't you?" the girl asked coldly.

"WHO ARE YOU? And why do you know so much about me?" Lisa demanded again.

"I didn't find out any of this firsthand," the girl explained, hands on her hips. "I was told. Of course I wanted to intervene, considering where _you're _heading. _Never _make the mistake of believing you're the only one who ever cared about Kaze. I don't really like you, but I know he loved you, and I know you need help. For Kaze's sake, _listen to what I'm trying to tell you. _You need to realize your mistakes, and find out whether or not you'd really correct them if you could."

"You still haven't answered my question," Lisa said, her mouth suddenly very dry.

The girl shook her head; for the first time, Lisa realized that her left ear was pierced, and that she was wearing a silver pendant earring. "Aura Hougekiju. You don't know me, but I knew Kaze and thanks to _her _information, I know you." She turned to leave, but not before Lisa got a clearer look at that earring.

Going completely white, Lisa began to shake. "It can't be," she said softly.

The strange girl, Aura, looked over her shoulder and gave Lisa a long, piercing stare, then walked away, vanishing in the crowd.

Lisa didn't try to follow her, but sat down very quickly. It couldn't be. She just _couldn't _be...

_"Where did you get this?"_

_"My sister... each of us had one."_

It couldn't be.

It simply _couldn't _be.

And if it was--even though it was impossible--how could someone like _that _have gotten here? The interdimensional subway, Elizabeth, had been destroyed long ago...

---

Lisa Heartbreaker and Colin Byrne were married exactly three months after Lisa Pacifist had died, lamenting the loss of her beloved.

By that time, Lisa Byrne's lower belly had visibly swollen; there was a new, delicate curve to her body, small in comparison to the form it would take, but still full. Placing her hands on the curve, Lisa would reminisce, and wonder if her child would ever know the story of its true father.

Although there were a few days when Lisa Byrne wanted to tell her husband about the girl named Aura, she never did. She never even explained her past to the new man who shared her bed.

Lisa never went back to work--_any _kind of work. Simply existing in the faceless purgatory of her faceless husband, she completed menial tasks, such as cleaning, laundry, and cooking. Her life slowly became so bland, so formulaic, that of every other faceless housewife in her country, that she sometimes wondered if her ill-fated journey in Wonderland had even been real.

The only proof she had was the three-month swell of her own pregnant belly.

And the distant glow of the blacklit pillar that loomed on the horizon.

And the still-vivid waking dreams that stole her mind whenever Colin Byrne had his way with her body, the vivid dreams that pursued her into her sleep.

Lisa Pacifist, the perfectly extraordinary young woman, had become perfectly ordinary, her bright soul subjugated into little more than a dull, fading spark.

But sometimes...

Some dark nights, when her foreign husband lay asleep upon her...

The vision of a girl, silver braids and black dress flying, would haunt her mind, her frosty gray eyes at once desperate and passionate and sad.

And she would hear again the words that had woken her in the middle of the night:

_"If you discovered where you went wrong, and you had the chance to go back and change it, would you?"_

(TBC)


	6. Paradise

Once in a Lifetime

see disclaimer in Part 1

_"Once upon a year gone by, she saw herself give in..."_

Colin Byrne had left the stereo on again when he'd gone off to work.

Lisa couldn't understand the words; the woman singing was American. But the heartache in the voice was something she understood too well.

She was standing at the sink, absently rubbing a cloth over a plate, as she always was at four o'clock in the afternoon. Since Colin Byrne didn't like it when she messed with his things, she'd left the machine on; it wasn't hurting anything, anyway.

But that song had come on, and now she could no longer school her mind not to think, to wallow in the complete oblivion of mindless tasks.

_"Every time she closed her eyes, she saw what could have been..."_

Sighing in frustration, Lisa tried to shove Kaze's face out of her mind's eye and stacked the last dish in the drainer.

But with Kaze banished from her thoughts, Ai and Yu's shades saw an opening and flooded in.

She wondered how they were doing. If they were still in Wonderland, or if they'd found a way back to Earth...

_No._

Keeping Kaze and the twins at bay, Lisa rummaged in a cabinet for a pot. It took about an hour to make a good stew, and that was what Colin Byrne was expecting for dinner.

After he'd come home and eaten, she would have to do the laundry...

_Laundry..._

Inspecting white sheets for stray flecks of semen, just in case she and Kaze hadn't been careful enough the past night...

_No._

She wasn't going to think about it.

_"Well, nothing hurts and nothing bleeds when covers tucked in tight... funny when the bottom drops how she forgets to fight... to fight..."_

Pulling open the refridgerator door, Lisa removed the foam container of beef chunks, setting it on the counter beside her. Filling the pot, Lisa set it atop the stove and set it to broil.

Trying to force her mind back to oblivion, Lisa dug around for the other ingredients--carrots, crushed tomatoes, egg noodles...

Skimming past the chili peppers, she almost smiled when she remembered the immense versions of the tiny red things that Chobi the chocobo had so loved...

_Stop thinking about it. He's gone. They're all gone..._

The water had begun to bubble. Shaking her head, Lisa dumped the meat and vegetables into the pot, adding the noodles barely a minute later, and searched for a wooden spoon with which to stir the concoction.

_"And it's one more day in paradise... one more day in paradise..."_

At least her mother couldn't be too ashamed of her now... she was living a more respectable life than whoring herself in a nightclub...

Even if she couldn't carry on her life as a user of Kigenjutsu...

Letting out an anguished noise, Lisa let go of the spoon. It rolled with the spiral of moving water and food in the black pot as the black-haired woman clapped her hands to her temples. That stupid song was driving her _crazy, _forcing her to think of her past like this. That settled it. She had to go turn it off.

Abandoning the stove, she marched over to the stereo. She was just about to set her hand on the "off" switch when the sound of the door opening made her jump.

Colin Byrne was home early.

But that wasn't the only unusual thing. He was swaying and staggering even worse than he had been when the two of them had first met, and his face was blotched red with drink. He tittered as he stumbled across the room towards her, and she instinctively recoiled. For the first time since she'd met him, his face was no longer a blur--she could clearly see his strong, prominent Roman nose, his thick brow, his black eyes, thin lips, and unshaven stubble. Those beetle-black eyes were unfocused, and across his face was scrawled an awful sneer.

This was not the face of a plain, ordinary man, as she'd thought when she'd met him at the club.

It was the face of a cruel, vindictive drunk.

"Told'jer not to touch m'things," Colin Byrne slurred, staggering dangerously towards Lisa, who had frozen. "N whut dec'nt howwsewyfe leav's th' cookin' on? Stup'd bitch..."

Lisa never even saw the blow coming, so she didn't have the time to soften it as she should've. In what seemed like an eyeblink to her, she was sprawled on the floor, her lip cut and throbbing, oozing bright red blood.

"Stup'd bitch," Colin Byrne repeated. Lisa couldn't move. Her body was shaking too badly. It was the first time she'd _really _felt fear since she'd left Wonderland, and she was too unaccustomed to it. She just couldn't move. "Got'tr pun'sh ya f'r that."

Wide-eyed in terror, trembling worse than a leaf in a windstorm, Lisa didn't realize she was speaking until Colin glowered at the sound of her voice. "Kaze... Kaze... Kaze... please... Kaze... anyone... Kaze... Kaze... please help... Kaze... Kaze... Kaze...!"

"No'ne's gon'a h'lp a skank bitch like _you," _Colin Byrne slurred viciously. "Cum'eere..."

It was over before Lisa had time to register what had happened. It seemed to her like their bodies had just collided, leaving him sneering and her in blinding pain, her skirt torn and her panties thrown carelessly aside.

As Lisa watched, too numb to speak, her cruel drunken "husband" tottered back outside, tittering again at the glee of his doings.

Curling into fetal position on the floor, Lisa fought the urge to chew her fingertips neurotically. Oh, _God. _What had he _done _to her? He was so drunk... did he even _know _what he'd done? She was married to a dangerous man... surely she could get help from the police...?

But no. They were _married. _As far as she knew, that gave him the right to do whatever he wanted to her, because there was no way to prove that anything... he'd done... wasn't consentual. Besides, all he had to do was tell the police that she'd once been a prostitute to completely lose any respect or credability she might have.

The door creaked again.

Trying to stagger into an upright position, too shaky to manage, Lisa let out a sobbing, hysterical burst of laughter. "Back for more, aren't you! Well, go ahead! I am your property, after all! Just a common street whore! Just your personal plaything! Come on! I don't care! _Kill _me this time, why don't you!"

But the voice that reached her ears was _not _that of Colin Byrne. It was soft, melodic, _familiar. _"I don't want your body, Lisa... how could you think that of me?"

This man was _not _Colin Byrne at all, Lisa realized as he entered the room. He was dressed in a hooded white cloak that concealed all but the lower half of his face, which was young and clean-shaven... if he even needed to shave. He didn't sound like an adult... and he had such soft-looking lips, which almost certainly had to belong to a girl...

Refusing to study further, refusing to pursue that haunting sense of familiarity about this stranger, Lisa forced herself into a shaky standing position, trying her hardest to ignore the sickly trickle of semen down her bare thigh. "You stay away from me!"

He made as if to step towards her, but she swiped an arm at him; he stepped back, and the movement caused his hood to slide down, revealing his face.

It was a young face, that of a boy perhaps only sixteen or seventeen, but a face that no human boy could possibly own. The soft, delicate features, wide, hurt jadeine eyes, soft, fluffy halo of white hair, and deadly-looking dark gray spikes belonged to...

Lisa fell silent, shocked. It was _impossible. _She had seen him die...

At last, she stepped forward, making a timid venture, searching the all-too-familiar face for the truth. "Makenshi...?"

In the next moment, she had thrown herself into his open arms, and released three months' worth of bottled-up, broken sobbing into his chest.

Although Lisa's weight sent him crumpling to his knees, he reacted instantly--with as much skill as the lost Lisa Pacifist would have. Holding her close, he gently stroked her messy black hair, his voice a soothing murmur in her ear.

"I'm here. I'm here. Don't worry. He won't find you while you're with me. Shhh. It's okay. It's okay. I'm here now."

Overwhelmed by an awkward mix of suppressed sorrow, fresh shock, and gratitude, Lisa continued to cry, only aware of his voice, his presence... not even stopping to wonder how this could be.

(TBC)


	7. Ghost of Chances Lost

Once in a Lifetime

see disclaimer in Part 1

It seemed several hours, but was only several minutes, before Lisa's sobbing finally ceased.

Only then could she begin to consider the strangeness of the situation--she'd seen Makenshi die with her own eyes; how could he have possibly survived something like the ordeal he'd been through? And even if he had, how had he gotten through to her personal outside world? And why had he told her that Colin Byrne wouldn't be able to find her if she was with him?

"How--?" she began to ask, loosening her death grip on his waist. But the sudden sticky feeling on the palm of her hand cut her short. Instantly falling silent, she stared--her right palm, and the undersides of every finger, were coated in the congealed, gooey, maroon-red mess of old, not-quite-clotted blood. With that realization, she turned her stunned gaze upon Makenshi, who had stopped looking concerned for her sake and now just seemed resigned and sad.

"Yes," he said in answer to her unspoken query. "That is my blood."

Sitting back a little, Lisa noticed for the first time that Makenshi's chest and hips were still soaked crimson, as they'd been the last time they'd seen each other. The awful wound that went straight through his body was still there as well... right about the area where she'd flung her arms around him, too.

"Don't look at me like that," Makenshi told her softly, once again correctly interpreting her expression. With a pained smile, he shook his head. "Can't you tell that I can't feel it anymore...?"

"But how are you here?" Lisa asked, her voice trembling. "And why did you come? I don't understand any of this...!"

For the third time, he looked at her and answered the questions she'd meant, not the ones she'd spoken. "No, Lisa... I _didn't _survive. You're only seeing me here because she sent me to deliver a message... and to show you what could have been. I'm a spirit, an astral presence. You're the only one who can see me, and while we're together, no one can see or hear you, either."

"Who is _she?" _Lisa asked plaintively. "And what do you mean, what _could have been?"_

"At any given time during events that determine the fate of important things, all players in such an event are free to make choices," Makenshi explained. Lisa could see in his tired jadeine eyes the importance of his words. "Because of the choices those players make, the outcome of the event will change to any one of many thousands of possible futures. Because of the choices we players made in the struggle with Chaos, this future has come to be.

"The children with you chose to seek out their parents. Kaze chose to take a stand. I chose to bide my time and see what I could learn. And you... chose to love a man many would have said was impossible to love.

"It was the combination of fate and your own choices that brought you here. But, Lisa... this future was not meant to be. She sent me here to show you how things could have been, if only _everyone _made the choices they should have."

As Lisa watched, Makenshi stood, drawing himself to his full height, and held out a hand to her. "Don't be afraid. Come with me. There is little that can cause you pain now."

With only a brief hesitation, Lisa reached out and clasped his hand.

---

When she opened her eyes, Lisa Byrne could've believed that she'd stepped into a dream.

The only reason she had to believe that she hadn't fallen asleep was Makenshi, who still stood beside her, holding her hand carefully in his own. It was still such an unbelievable situation, but there she was, and there he was, too--still soaked in his own blood. For some reason, he no longer wore the white cloak; he was clothed in the white, bloodstained swordsman's uniform and cape that she recognized.

"What is this place?" Lisa asked slowly. She didn't think she had ever seen the sky quite so blue.

"A future that, at one time, could have been," was Makenshi's sad reply.

He fell silent then, as Lisa's attention was drawn to a small group of students from the local Sadogashima middle school came down the walk opposite them.

There were three boys and two girls in the happy, laughing cluster. All three boys were wearing the typical navy blue jumpsuit and carrying schoolbags--the one in the lead was of medium height, the tallest of the three. He had short, thick purple hair that lay over his forehead in untidy hanks and a bright laugh. The boy beside him, a little shorter, had dark brown hair swept back at the side in a cowlick and equally dark umber eyes. The third was pale-skinned and somewhat delicate-looking, between the height of the other two; he had wavy teal-blue hair and large, liquid eyes of the same color.

The two girls were also in uniform, wearing tan blazers, white shirts, red neckties, and brown skirts. One had pink hair pinned up at the side of her head and behind it; her brown eyes glittered as she told off the brown-haired boy, even more so as the others laughed at whatever she'd said. The other had short silver hair, bright eyes an amazing shade of clear yellow, and strange, salmon-pink marks on her cheeks. She seemed to be a little younger than the others, but laughed just as gamely as the others at their childish comments.

Lisa gasped and took a shaky step towards them, feeling her world swaying beneath her. "It can't be... it just can't be...!"

As the little group continued to approach, Lisa could hear them speaking: the purple-haired boy turned to the pink-haired girl and cheerfully asked her if she would like to go see some apparently new film the next night.

"No way, Touya. You just don't get it," the girl replied, rolling her eyes sympathetically to her friends, who either laughed or giggled, depending on gender. "Like I'd ever go anywhere with an annoying boy like _you _by myself!"

The purple-haired boy pouted. "But Ai-san..."

"What's wrong, Touya-kun? Can't deal with rejection?" the silver-haired girl asked teasingly.

"It's only the fifty-millionth time," the brown-haired boy added, looking truly sad.

"She can't go," the blue-eyed young man said calmly but seriously. "She's already going with me..."

The boy named Touya head-slumped; everyone but the blue-eyed boy laughed.

Lisa stared after them as they left, still chattering to each other.

"They can't see us," Makenshi said softly to her, his voice bringing her back to reality.

"But..." she protested, shaking her head. "Lou... and that boy Clear... _how...?"_

Makenshi's sad jadeine eyes grew even sadder as he looked at the small group of students. "There was once a time when they could've been saved," he said simply.

Lisa, staring at him, saw on his face a sorrow still more terrible than the one burning in her chest, consuming her heart. Briefly, she wondered what he would have to lament. _He _wasn't the one who'd been told that if not for his choices, this would all have come about.

The two of them instinctively followed the group of children, watching as the purple-haired youth named Touya said goodbye and walked down a different street, as the remaining four headed back to a building that Lisa found _very _familiar.

They continued to watch as Joe and Mary Hayakawa, answering the door, invited all four in, bringing them all inside with happy welcomes.

Clear Omega and Lou Lupus, one an outcast and the other an orphan, had found a home with their dearest friends.

"Let's go," Makenshi whispered and pulled her away.

Walking down Sadogashima's crowded streets, the two of them turned corners and around boulevards until the scenery once again became hauntingly familiar.

"Look," came the soft command beside her. Makenshi was pointing to the figures of two people walking the opposite way down the street.

One was a tall man in a suit, with a pleasant face, dark-rimmed glasses, and dark hair cropped short except for one long tuft that fell into his face in an appealing way. He walked side by side with a young mother holding the hand of her daughter, her long black hair unbound, her pleasant face open and content. Lisa could see, from the full curve of her belly, that she was pregnant a second time. For a moment, she thought that the pair were husband and wife, but a second, closer look made it suddenly click in her mind.

It started with her recognition of the man. "That's..." Her eyes going round, she turned to Makenshi urgently. "That's Dolwa! He works at the same agency I do... he's the one who assigned me to the Hayakawa case!"

Makenshi simply nodded and gestured back to Dolwa and the unknown woman.

Turning back, Lisa couldn't help but cry out.

The mystery woman was _her._

But it wasn't herself that Lisa couldn't keep her eyes off. It was the girl tagging along beside her.

The child only looked to be about three years old or so. She had shoulder-length brown hair that, when touched by the sunlight, rippled with rich auburn tones that had been subtly blended into the chestnut and mahogany that were normally visible. Her eyes were the same deep brown as Lisa's, wide and cheerful, and her face was liberally sprinkled with freckles, covering both cheeks and the bridge of her nose. She wore a hooded yellow T-shirt with a red star on each shoulder, red shorts, and cute little white high-tops, and skipped along at her mother's side, obviously without a care in the world.

But even through the girlish silliness, Lisa could see the beginnings of something deeper in the child when she paused in her games to look up at the sky in open wonder and reverence.

Without a doubt, she knew--the girl was her daughter, and Kaze's.

Unable to stop herself, Lisa let out a dry sob, stifling her cry with her balled-up fists. She knew she shouldn't, but she just couldn't help it. The little girl was such a beautiful, _perfect _child, obviously being raised not only by her own parents but by several extended families--Dolwa included, of course, by the way he and the other Lisa both smiled at her.

Lisa Byrne's heart hurt so badly, it felt as though her chest would explode into flame. If this was the way things were _supposed _to happen, how would her _real _daughter come into the world, with only a burnt-out husk of a mother to guide her?

_Where had she gone wrong?_

With only her fists to cut back the sound, Lisa truly cried for only the second time since the birth of Lisa Heartbreaker.

Feeling gentle arms around her, she knew that Makenshi had embraced her, just killing her again by turns of cruelty and kindness. "Why are you doing this?" she asked thickly.

"You _have _to see," he insisted, though not unkindly. "I would spare you, but you _have _to see. So did I... believe me, I _know _how much it hurts to see the way it could've been, if only you hadn't been so _stupid--" _For a moment, there was true agony in his voice, enough to stop Lisa's broken sobbing.

Releasing her, Makenshi extended his hand to her yet again. "Will you come with me, to finish this journey?"

Reluctantly, Lisa nodded, and took it.

---

The other Lisa, now carrying her sleeping child, pushed open the door to a small house, where Kaze stood waiting for her.

"She's tired out," the happy mother said softly. "Poor thing... she was so sleepy on the walk home. It's good to be back."

As was his wont, Kaze said nothing, but slipped his arm around her waist, kissing his daughter's forehead in passing before moving on to the lips of his love.

The real Lisa, standing several yards away, sighed and shook her head, all too aware of Makenshi's arm around her shoulders. "Where _did _I go wrong?" she asked numbly. "What did I do that kept so much good from happening in this world?"

"It's not all your fault," Makenshi told her, turning to face her directly. "We _all _made choices that caused your situation to arise. There are things that I myself..." Breaking off, he fell into a brief silence, his lips a tight, pained line. "Perhaps you need to see with your own eyes."

He began to walk back towards the apartment complexes; it was almost all Lisa could do to keep up with him.

"But where did I go wrong?" Lisa asked, breathing rapidly, as she trotted alongside him, trying to match his long strides with as many of her own as it took.

"That, only you can know. You're the only one who was inside your mind. It might have been something as small as a thought, or as large as an attack. But there was something you did that helped cause your nightmare to come to be." He hesitated, then shook his head. "It may take you a while to find out what it was. I still don't know what I could've done to change things, myself." They were inside a complex now, chasing up flights of stairs; Makenshi made a sudden turn into a corridor, with Lisa almost running to catch up.

They came to a door, which as spirits, they simply passed through. Once they had, Lisa picked up the distinct sounds of a male voice, cracked and moaning.

In her experience, there was only one thing _that _could mean.

Following the sound with a slight frown, Lisa came to another door, this one slightly open. She only caught the briefest glimpse of two nude bodies writhing together within the disheveled sheets of a bed before Makenshi put his hand on her shoulder and coaxed her back.

"You... might want to wait a moment," he said quietly, hesitantly. "I'm not sure that's something you want to see."

With the experience of Lisa Heartbreaker, she doubted that any strange sexual inclination of the pair in the room could faze her, but because it would put Makenshi at ease, she stayed outside, waiting and listening.

Over the space of a few minutes, Lisa became aware of two things--that of the two voices she could hear from the room, both were definitely male, and that one of them, though she hadn't recognized it at first because it was hard to imagine him in throes of ecstasy, belonged to Makenshi.

Of course. He had brought her to his own private nightmare, the source of his torment--what would have been if not for his own choices.

Turning from the door to her now-silent companion, Lisa was struck by the look of suffering on Makenshi's face--almost any other man would be drinking in the sounds from the bedroom, ready to jump on whoever crossed his path just to relieve the sexual tension. But Makenshi seemed as though he would rather have been _anywhere _else... he obviously didn't want to be hearing this, knowing what was behind that door. And through the layers and layers of deep, scarring pain, there was just the slightest hint of wistfulness, as though he wished he could take the place of his other self.

Finally, from behind the door came a muffled scream and a low, hoarse moan; there was silence, then murmuring too quiet for Lisa to hear properly, and then more silence.

Makenshi nodded; Lisa realized that the second voice, that of the other Makenshi's mystery lover, had been familiar as well...

A bit wary but intensely curious, Lisa walked through the door into the bedroom.

Beside the wall, the bed itself was a royal mess, with crumpled sheets everywhere and even a pillow dumped on the floor. Lisa had expected that much; it was the identity of the man in the other Makenshi's bed that surprised her.

Built along the same lines as the white-haired swordsman, though a little taller and slightly sturdier, he rested his head on his crossed arms, his eyes closed and his hair in his face... his waist-length, messy crimson hair, stray tufts drawing lines across his back that intersected with the marks that his lover's nails had apparently made, flanking dark gray spikes.

Lisa knew this man.

Madoushi, the younger swordsman had called him once.

Makenshi's own brother.

To see him _alive _was one thing, after the disaster that had taken place in the city of clouds... to see him alive like _this _was quite another. Lisa had never exactly associated Makenshi with any specific sexual inclinations, having no idea what even his sexual orientation was; she'd been prepared for anything, she'd thought. But incest... that had taken her off guard.

Still, it wasn't as though she could say anything. Working at the nightclub, she had seen and done too many things to allow her to criticize someone else's choices.

Turning back to the Makenshi who had brought her to this place, she was shocked to see that he had covered his face with both hands, his shoulders shaking.

"There isn't a _single day _that goes by that I don't ask myself what I could've done differently," the young swordsman managed through choking sobs. "There isn't a single day when I don't think of him and wonder why I was so abysmally stupid that I fell right into Oscha's trap..." Lisa laid a hand on his shoulder as he shook his head violently. "Oh, Niisama..."

"I'm sorry," she murmured, stroking along his back. "I'm sorry."

"Do you have _any idea _at all how lucky you are?" he asked miserably. "To have the chance you do... the chance that the rest of us will never receive...?"

"What chance?" Lisa asked, confused.

Tears still in his eyes, Makenshi laid his hands on Lisa's shoulders, fixing her with his intense stare. "She will tell you soon. But for now... as you've already begun to ask yourself _where you've gone wrong, _you need to consider something equally as important: _If you had the chance to go back and try to change what you did during the Chaos wars, once you knew what it was you did wrong, would you?"_

Lisa stared at him, shocked. _"Of course I would! _If there was anything I could do to bring this future to happen--"

"Even if the thing that you did was something you _want _to have happened?" Makenshi asked, and she fell silent. "What if the thing you need to sacrifice is your choice to travel with the Comodeen? Or your relationship with Ai and Yu? Or the nights you shared with Kaze?" Lisa flinched. "It's crucial--will you be willing to go back and change your past? Even knowing what you could obtain, would you be willing to lose something so important to you?"

Lisa was silent, torn. Makenshi was right. If it meant losing something so important, _could _she bear to change the past?

"You need to think about it. Because... you just might get that chance."

They were both silent, caught in dreams of the past.

"She will come for you, and you will have to choose. Where and when, I'm not sure. But... until that day... take care." He embraced her tightly, clutching her like life to his chest. Lisa became aware that he had no heartbeat. In its place was the lonely silence of meaningless existence... an echo of her own.

Impulsively, her heart whirling with rediscovered sympathies, Lisa stood on tiptoe and gave him the brief kiss of a friend, resting her head on his slightly sloped, bare shoulder. "Oyasumi," she whispered.

Sparing only the briefest glance at the oblivious, happy couple in the bed, Makenshi held her close, letting his eyes close as darkness swirled around them. "Kansha suru."

---

When Lisa came to, she was lying on a stretcher, being fussed over by two paramedics; Colin Byrne hovered anxiously in the background.

Seeing that she was awake, he tried to get closer to her, babbling. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me, I don't know why I did that to you, please forgive me, I'm so sorry..."

Looking at his cruel but shock-paled face, Lisa was reminded forcibly of something she had heard her father once say. _A man who hits a dog is likely to kick it in a week._

She would have to be very careful in the future. It wasn't that she didn't believe Colin Byrne was sorry; it was just the fact that she knew how likely abuse was to repeat itself. He would attack her again--he might not be able to help it.

She'd just try not to give him a reason to.

It was all she could do until the woman Makenshi had mentioned arrived.

(TBC)


	8. Waiting for the Final Ghost

Once in a Lifetime

see disclaimer in Part 1

All she could do was wait.

And so she'd _been _waiting, for almost a month.

Lisa Byrne's belly had swollen still further; on a visit to the physician Colin Byrne had put her in touch with, she had discovered that despite her own condition, her baby was healthy and perfectly formed. And, as she'd already known, female.

Timidly, Colin Byrne asked his wife if she'd picked out a name yet; Lisa had ignored him. She had far more serious things to think about than baby names at this point.

Her mind was stuck on Aura's words--_"Where did you go wrong?"_--and Makenshi's--_"If you could go back and change what you did, would you?"_. She still couldn't decide where exactly she'd crossed the line, but was now beset with worries--could she change her past? Would she? What would she have to sacrifice? It couldn't be something so easy as she'd first thought, with Makenshi's warning... if the woman who he'd claimed had sent him had truly orchestrated all of this purposely.

Nothing in life was _ever _that easy.

To make things still worse, she and Colin Byrne were walking on eggshells around each other. She was still wary of his crueler side; he didn't know what to do to convince her of his caring since his initial overtures had failed. Although she did want to avoid becoming another statistic, Lisa truly could've done without all the creeping and suspicion and proclamations of innocence.

Of course, the good side to all this was that Colin Byrne hadn't tried to get her in bed with him again. It meant a relief from the consistent Kaze flashbacks that still plagued her whenever she had sex, and a bit more sanity than she'd maintained for the past five months.

There was only one thing, aside from the constant seeking, that really bothered her now.

Her dreams had become vivid and strange since Makenshi's visit, amazingly lifelike but mystic, impossible for her to decipher.

One night, she had walked through the ruins of a city, her feet guiding her as she drifted aimlessly throughout the wreckage.

On one huge chunk of cement, apparently part of what had once been a building, sat Makenshi's brother, his crimson clothes tattered, his sword broken in two before him, slumped in despair with a hand covering his eyes.

She had walked towards him, touched his shoulder; but when she'd touched him, the horrors she had seen...

His body, pinned against some kind of circular device, hung in midair, his eyes focused past her, huge in terror. Everything else dissolved into a mad swirl of color and pain, but she had heard him screaming. No man should ever scream like that, Lisa had thought wildly--so loud and long, in such horror and agony that it cracked and shattered and twisted. And he had gone on screaming, crying, pleading... enough that she knew what had happened to him.

She had pulled away, afraid; he had desperately clasped her hand, and there had been reddish, swollen streaks beneath his eyes, with fresh tears on his cheeks. "Please tell him I'm sorry," he had begged her over and over... "I didn't mean it, I didn't want to, tell Kumo I'm sorry..."

Another night, she had sat side by side with Makenshi on a precipice suspended above the clouds, watching him as he slept with his head on her shoulder. It was strange, and perhaps it was just a trick of the sky's pure blueness and the softness of the clouds just below them, but he seemed so young, so frail. And so tired... there were shadows beneath his eyes, from lack of sleep. So close to him, she could see that his skin was still soft and translucent like a child's. Although he had endured so much, he seemed unbelievably weak and helpless as he sat beside her, his breath soft on her cheek. She wanted to hold and protect him forever.

One of the worse dreams, which still came off and on, was of Kaze.

Lisa simply watched, unable to do anything. That alone broke her heart. The tragedies she faced crushed its tender halves into dust.

The ground was shattering beneath her; the dark wind swirling around her made it hard for her to see anything but the pair right before her.

Kaze... and Aura.

Her small hand was clasped tightly in his; he was speaking softly. Lisa heard his every word perfectly, no matter how she tried not to.

"After this battle, everything will end... everything..." Somewhere within the hoarse despair, there was a hidden plea. _"Everything..."_

Aura cut him off, her voice sharp. It always shocked Lisa to see the tears on her face. "Use it."

"Aura..." The plea was more insistent, in Kaze's eyes as well as his voice.

"You _have _to use my Soil! It's the only way!"

"Aura, _no..."_

"Stop making excuses! Whether we're able to defeat Chaos or not, there's nothing left of Windaria! Is this what you want to leave me! Challenging Chaos now will only kill you--we're both out of bullets unless you let me do this!"

"Aura, _please... _you can't...!" Lisa felt like she'd fly to pieces just seeing it--Kaze openly anguished, the tears gathering in his eyes, though his voice told her he still fought to hold them back.

Yanking her hand out of Kaze's grasp, Aura slammed it to her chest, the vicious winds already forcing the two of them to drift slowly apart.

_"AURA!" _Kaze's cry was desperate as he reached for her.

"You _must _use my Soil," was all she said, closing her eyes as her body blazed gold. "My soul..."

There was a brilliant flash, and Kaze stood alone, his clenched fist held to his chest. Through his fingers, Lisa could see the bullet of ever-shifting colors that was his sister's life.

And the dream always ended there.

It felt as though Lisa had been assaulted with the stories of a million lives.

But there was one image that continued to haunt her.

Unlike the others it was confused, jumbled. The only clear, fixed point was the form of a woman, somewhere around Lisa's age, sprawled in an undignified heap before a glimmering blue crystal sphere. In other situations, she must have seemed elegant and graceful in the flower-blue dress and pale yellow cloak that she wore; not so here. Too spent to move, lacking the will even to sit up, she twisted into a curl on the ground and cried, her body shaking uncontrollably. If Lisa stared too long at the crystal, she could see vague, chaotic images swirling beneath its surface; looking for even a few moments made her queasy, so she tried to avoid it.

She knew that somehow, this disjointed fragment of a vision lay at the center of the others. This strange woman was the source of the turmoil in her mind. She had no idea how she knew something like that, but she did--and for once, she just decided to trust her instincts. Pondering and trying to second-guess her intuition gave her a headache.

Lisa Byrne had more of Lisa Pacifist in her than she knew.

---

Having been lost in thought for hours, when she heard a footstep behind her, without thinking, she spoke softly: "Kaze...?"

"No." It was Colin Byrne's voice. Lisa made a face, oblivious to his irritation, disappointed instead in herself. She should know better. Just because her head was in the clouds all the time didn't mean she had to bring her daydreaming into her daily life. That would only bring her pain...

As if the daydreams themselves weren't painful enough...

"Who is Kaze?" Colin Byrne asked sharply.

She looked over her shoulder at him. There was a scowl on his face; his thick brows were knitted angrily. Remembering that prudent silence could save lives, she said nothing, just angled a reproachful stare towards him.

"I asked you a _question, _damn you!"

Once again, she didn't answer.

"Who is Kaze? Some other damn man you're keeping on the side? The reason I don't suit your taste anymore!"

Where had he managed to get _that _idea? Lisa wondered, now looking at Colin Byrne as though he were disturbed. Still, she did not answer, although she turned to face him completely, watching warily.

"When a husband asks a question of his wife, he requires an _answer!"_

_Here it comes. _Bracing herself, Lisa was able to take the brunt of the heavy blow without falling. Even so, she tasted blood; her lip was cut again. Well, she didn't have to take it this time--after everything she'd seen and done, after standing against Chaos, she wasn't going to let this pitiful man order her around. She glared at him acidly.

"Kuroki Kaze was the father of my child," she said, her voice loud and strong, wiping the trace of blood from her cheek.

"Why should I believe you!" Colin Byrne swung again; Lisa, seeing the movement, ducked out of the way.

The sudden burst of self-confidence, the part of Kaze in her that had roared into unexpected life, would not allow her to hold her tongue. "One truly _must _wonder what kind of mind can't take into account that _raping _his spouse just might diminish her sexual ardor--"

Colin Byrne bellowed and ran at her; reacting out of simple instinct and training, Lisa flung her hands out before her and yelled. There was a soft ripple in the air, and Colin Byrne was thrown backwards against the ratty carpeting.

Staring at her palms, Lisa felt a tiny, hummingbird's-wing flutter in her chest... a tiny, almost unrecognizable flicker of joy, so long absent from her life. Her Kigenjutsu had returned to her.

Struggling back to his feet, Colin Byrne glared white-faced at her. "I always _knew _there was something not right about you, damn slut--"

Following the tiny wing-flutter in her chest was a much more powerful one, panic. Promptly forgetting her self-defense training, Lisa ran, fumbling with the doorknob, pattering down the rickety stairs to the street.

Catching herself on a sidewalk corner, she paused, her breathing rapid, one hand pressed to her belly. She couldn't run as fast or as far now, and in her condition, she wouldn't be able to stay out on the streets for long. She needed help; she certainly wasn't going back now.

Dolwa, she thought to herself wildly, remembering the future Makenshi had showed her. Surely _he _would be able to help her, if she could just get to the agency--

But she had no money--

Looking over her shoulder, still panting shallowly, Lisa froze as a vast blueness swept over everything, and the world froze.

Deep in her bones, she knew.

The one who had sent Aura and Makenshi had come.

(TBC)


	9. Fabula

Once in a Lifetime

See disclaimer in Part 1

Lisa couldn't stop trembling.

Although she had been waiting for the appearance of this mysterious woman for a month, she couldn't help being terrified. She'd _known _that Makenshi and Aura had been dead, but it had never quite sunken in just how truly powerful the one who had sent them was.

Now she was beginning to realize.

Powerful enough to hold back the dead from their final resting place, possibly powerful enough to _call _them from that resting place, in Aura's case. Powerful enough to create an entire reality out of a collapsed future, a paradox. Powerful enough to freeze time. Powerful enough to see the future.

Far, far more powerful than Chaos could ever have been.

Maybe Lisa was getting in over her head, trying to deal with someone like that...

In the absolute silence, there was no way she could have missed even such a minute sound--the slow drag of fabric against the cement of the sidewalk.

With it came the faint sound of waves...

Neither could Lisa mistake that immensity of that spirit. Whatever it was, it wasn't human.

Still shivering, she turned towards the source of the sound.

And instantly recognized the figure she saw.

It was the woman from her dreams.

She'd been right to think that when not as distraught as she'd seemed in that one fragmented image, the woman would be graceful. She moved with slow, deliberate steps that, taken by another, might've been considered wooden; her long dress and cloak trailed on the ground behind her. From beneath the cloak's cowl, she stared at Lisa, and the look in her eyes was _distinctly _unfriendly. Her hands were clenched at her sides, and cold waves of power rolled off her like chilly tides.

Lisa's mind went blank. She couldn't think of what to say or do; she didn't know what she was supposed to _feel. _She'd been awaiting this woman's coming for so long, and yet she seemed so hostile now... what could she do against someone of such immense strength?

The woman was closer now; all that Lisa was able to pay attention to were her eyes. They were altogether bizarre--though this strange person was clearly glaring at Lisa with all her fury, it didn't seem like she was really looking _at _Lisa at all... more like she was staring _through _her. And the gaze didn't come from the eyes directly, but from behind them. They were of an odd shade, too... Lisa couldn't decide whether they were the blue of the sea or the deep green of uncut emeralds. The pupils were contracted, but weren't circular like a human's. Instead, they formed tall, narrow ovals, as if the woman had the eyes of a cat.

"Lisa Pacifist."

Lisa flinched at the judgemental tone.

"You think you know the gravity of what you have done... but as yet you have no idea."

She couldn't think of anything to say.

"My name is Fabula Kronos, and I am your Guide... your Guide to what pitiful future this world has left..."

Faster than Lisa could react, Fabula grabbed her upper arms, preventing her from moving. Although Lisa struggled, the Guide's grip seemed to be made of steel--her hands wouldn't budge. Her nails were digging into Lisa's flesh, and her demanding gaze was starting to make Lisa feel as queasy as looking into the crystal in the dream...

And yet, she couldn't look away...

"You _must _understand what you've done, so that you may choose when it is asked of you...!"

Lisa's vision blurred and hazed, and she felt her knees buckle beneath her just before everything went black.

---

Where was she...? She felt so _awful... _as though her head was about to split apart...

Yes... she was just watching, as always...

The images took form before her eyes, hard, fast, and brutal as always.

Herself, standing defeated with Colin Byrne, who looked angry, scowling, and triumphant.

Another flash of herself--alone this time, lying half-naked in the bathtub, crying and breathing hard... giving birth.

Her little girl--hollow-cheeked and solemn, but bright-eyed: The same girl she'd seen with Makenshi, but mistreated, suffering from malnutrition. And more visibly Kaze's daughter than ever.

The same beautiful little baby, only three years old, dead in an alley, herself clinging to the corpse and wailing with grief.

She saw the bloodstains on her daughter's worn little shorts, and knew exactly what had happened to her.

The images swirled and changed, becoming less distinct: Dolwa, his eyes oddly blank even though his face was twisted in evil rage, what seemed like a glowing piece of paper held between his first two fingers. His clothes and hair were in disarray; around him were strange beasts that snarled and slavered at the surrounding people, who cowered in fear.

On Dolwa's index finger was a strange, heavy gold ring with a familiar-looking symbol on it. Lisa had never seen him wearing a ring before...

Herba, alive... but changed; the flowerbud on her head erupted in lurid bloom. Laughing in wicked pleasure, caressing the shoulder of a boy in similar clothing to the Earl...

A boy who looked _far _too much like Yu...

Oscha's laughter, dark and mocking, in the background against the stormy sky...

In a dark corner of the Hayakawa laboratory, Ai, scratched and bleeding, huddled in fear with the purple-haired boy Touya beside her, staring warily into the shadows. In her hands, she held one of the iridescent crystals that made up Omega...

The Pillar of Darkness extending, branching out, reaching up into the roiling clouds...

And her own corpse, just one more among the many, trampled by Chaos' monsters in the streets...

---

Lisa blinked and was back, tears tracing down her cheeks, Fabula's glare as insistent as ever, although her grip was no longer quite so tight.

"Do you understand now? Without the aid of Kuroki Kaze and Shiroi Kumo to suppress the advance of Chaos, there _is _no future for Chikyu. Oscha and Herba could sustain no lasting damage from a fall into Chaos, because they themselves are elements of it. They have already sustained contact with your world through the Pillar of Darkness and will come for the new body for Chaos. Without the Unlimited to resist them, they will succeed. Worlds will again be consumed... and yours only the first.

"Kaze can no longer resurrect, now that his blood is already being carried forward. The line of the Unlimited must survive in some way or another. And without Kaze as an anchor... when Kumo was rescued by the doll Crux after Gaudium's collapse, he succumbed quickly to his wounds and died, alone and afraid. Their destinies are forever interlinked. Where Kaze goes, Kumo must follow." Fabula shook her head. "All I was able to do was retrieve his soul, once it had left his body."

Lisa, unable to control her sobs, shook her head. "I don't understand _why! _Why do all of this to me...? Why send Aura and Makenshi to me, if I may not be able to choose?"

"Because there is always _some _point where I must draw the line," Fabula said firmly, still glaring. "Even if it requires my _direct _interference. I am no user of Magun or Maken--my abilities have their limits. Even if it's only by supplying your party with Poshepocket or snatching you from the jaws of Omega in the dimensional tunnel, I have always done what I can. But although our meeting here--if this future is allowed to continue--will cost me my life, it doesn't matter anymore. Why should I have a future, if no free being in the many worlds will?"

Lisa had gone very white. Of course--she remembered now; she _had _heard of Fabula before... if only from Ai's description of how she'd gotten Poshepocket. And Fabula was powerful enough to have saved them from certain death before...? And what did she mean about their meeting costing her life? Her thoughts were hopelessly scattered.

_"Where you went wrong--_a simple enough question to answer. Think. What is it that causes Kaze's bloodline to continue at this time?"

Lisa blinked, then answered, hesitantly. "M..my pregnancy..."

"Exactly. For Kaze's bloodline to end with him, what would need to happen in the past?"

"I would... have to... not get pregnant..."

"Yes. You know what you must do, don't you? Your daughter was conceived on the first night you spent together, on Jane's decks. That makes the answer... rather clear."

Lisa was silent, not wanting to think too much.

_"If you had the chance to change it, would you--_now that, Lisa Pacifist, is up to you. Some things truly must wait, but can you bear the journey through Wonderland _without _taking Kuroki Kaze as your lover? If not, you may always try to alter the future through some other means. But I warn you, second chances only come once in a lifetime."

"But--" Lisa began, looking down at her own pregnant belly desperately. She did not want to lose her daughter.

"You have seen two possible futures," Fabula told her. "Think about what you've seen."

Lisa was silent, pondering. Then, she nodded. "I... think I understand..."

"And now, the final question... _Will you take the chance I am willing to give you?"_

"I have something to ask you first," Lisa admitted. "Why are you doing this... giving me the chance to go back, and... and do it over. Besides the whole thing with Chaos, I mean."

At last, Fabula released her grip on Lisa's arms. "Because I love those two children," she said softly, "more than anyone can ever know. And Akai Kiri, the Madoushi... Shiroi Kumo, the Makenshi. Kuroki Kaze, for all his faults. Lou Lupus and Clear Omega and Crux. Cid, Knave, Miles, Fungo; all the Comodeen... Aura Hougekiju, who so few of you met in life. Fungus, the unfortunate, fallen and deceived Lord of Gaudium. And you, Lisa Pacifist... you, who were willing to open your heart and love the unlovable." Lisa noticed with a shock that there were tears in those cat's eyes, which Fabula allowed to fall, not reaching to brush them away. "Dolwa and Touya, as yet unaware of the roles they are to play. Because I love you all so much, I'm willing to throw my life away in hopes that you can make things right again."

Lisa was silent, deeply touched by the other woman's honesty.

"Who are you, really?" she asked, curious.

That got a smile.

"I... am simply Fabula... nothing more."

Stepping back, she held out her hand.

"Lisa Pacifist, will you go back and do it all over?"

The black-haired woman smiled as well.

"...Yes."

Taking Fabula's hand, Lisa felt a soft, warm white light welling up in her chest. Closing her eyes, she sighed and let the light fill her. Seeing the ecstasy filling Lisa's face, Fabula closed the distance between them and pulled the young woman into her arms.

She spoke a few words in a strange, unrecognizable tongue.

And both of them vanished, as if they'd never stood on the walk at all, as time began again.

(TBC)


	10. Requiem

Once in a Lifetime

see disclaimer in Part 1

Lisa Pacifist crouched in the shadows as the huge, monstrous-looking train roared into the station. She waited patiently through the agonizing minutes it took for the doors to open, then darted inside as the departure bell clanged.

Dolwa would be disappointed in her--it seemed she'd dozed off on her post, if only for a few seconds. That was bad enough, but... all the same, she'd had such a beautiful dream. She'd been enveloped in a warm white light, soaring through the ages...

There was something she was supposed to remember, but she couldn't quite get a fix on what exactly it was. She didn't worry, though... whatever it was, it was just ingrained so deeply into her heart that she had no doubt... when the time came, she would remember it completely, and do whatever she was supposed to do.

But she had a job to take care of now.

Finding the Hayakawas, Joe and Mary, was her first priority now.

Pulling out her cellphone, she hit the speed-dial and raised it to her lips.

"This is Pacifist reporting, I'm currently--"

---

Sprawled on the floor, her vision already beginning to fade, Fabula listened to her breath beginning to rasp and rattle in her chest, her lungs straining for air although she knew she wouldn't get enough.

Even so long after losing its mortality, her body was still so... foolish...

She had broken Guide law. She knew the price, and wasn't afraid.

Besides... she'd lived a long time...

And she believed in Lisa Pacifist.

She wouldn't remember any of this when she awoke, circling back to her place in the past, Guiding the "Hayakawa" children on their journey. That much she knew.

She wouldn't ever know that this had taken place... unless...

Unless she managed to glean it in the future that, hopefully, would no longer continue...

Her eyes half-closed; she sighed.

The myriad creatures in glass pearls throughout the giant shell wailed in distress and alarm when, even for hours afterwards, she did not get up.

She had made her choice. And through it, the future...

The spiraling future...

...would be saved...

-owari-

**Credits: **FF:U and FF:U After Spiral both belong to Square-Enix's FF:U Committee, and the various animation and production companies who worked on it. The lyrics in Chapter 7 are from the song _Paradise _by Vanessa Carlton. OiaL is otherwise mine. If you plagiarize, I will send my security (Envy) to get you. When he's done with you, you will then be fed to Reiko-kun, who is badly in need of new chew toys. He gets through them so quickly...

**Thanx: **Final Summon for reading and reviewing my every chapter, as well as all those other readers who read but don't review. (You better go back and review them now!) Thalia for letting me spoil every little story I write, and allowing me to run this plot by you before posting. Square for actually making FF:U in the first place!

Thanx also to Amy Lee and Vanessa Carlton. In all likelihood, you and I will never meet, but thank you for your music.

Super-thanx to my wonderful muses, particularly to Ghaleon and Stroud. I love you forever for inspiring me in your respective genres; big thanx to Stroud for never running out of drive. You and I are the perfect angst-writing team!

Thanx to my wonderful security, Envy-chan, for all the Ed-is-a-pipsqueak jokes, and for letting me pinch your cheeks. Next time you want to invite Lust over, make sure Sloth can babysit Gluttony because I can't afford to get all the food in the house eaten.

Thanx always to Rau-sama, for inspiring me with your wonderful speeches and being your lovely, perfect self. May your shower scene in Phase-10 of Gundam Seed always give me nosebleeds.

I love you, Shanon Weaver. Once again, we will most likely never meet, but I'm just so happy to be able to hear your voice. ADV picked the perfect voice actor for Kumo-chan. I'm so grateful to you for agreeing to give him a voice for all the nitpicky American audiences. Thank you so much.

Double-thanx to Yersi Fanel; your After Spiral information helped me in so many ways... especially in giving me fodder to write OiaL and KnH with. Hehehe.

Thanx thanx Kumo-chan. You will always be my plushy. One day we mad fangirls will stop putting you through so much misery for our angst ficcies. Someday...

Thanx Kaze and Lisa for being FF:U's flagship couple. You two will figure it out in After Spiral someday, I just know it. Heartshipping isn't nearly as popular as Skyshipping on FF-Net, but it's still got a fanbase. Hope I didn't embarrass you too badly with all those lemon-flavored scenes...

Thanx Fabula-sama for being so awesome. Even if no one else is, I'm trying to get you the credit you so deeply deserve.

Finally, thanx to whoever's reading this right now, to know who I'm grateful to! And, of course, to anybody I missed...

**-Author's Commentary-**

**Fuuko: **I actually created Fuuko with Samurai Champloo's Fuu in mind... that's where I got the name from (NOT Magic Knight Rayearth's Fuu...) They don't look very much alike, but they have somewhat similar personalities.

**Colin Byrne: **I never could call him by anything but his full name. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people like him around, who seem perfectly normal but actually aren't. He was basically around to help form Lisa's personal hell. Out of all my original characters, even the bad guys, I think I actually hate Colin Byrne the most.

**Lisa: **All that about Lisa being Chinese is true, by the way, and gleaned from obsessive watching of certain episodes. The Pillar of Darkness appeared in the sea between Japan and China; among other people, we got to see Lisa with some of her family members and neighbors watching it appear. Her mother was not present, so that was probably very shortly after she died. Also, Lisa says in episodes 10 and 16 that after her mother's death, she moved to the neighboring country. Japan is an _island. _There are no neighboring countries there. Lisa had to have lived in China. Besides, the cutscene that showed her in school had all the characters present dressed in heavy clothing, with scarves. So she moved somewhere cold (i.e. Russia). Yes, that is the extent to which I watch FF:U. Scary, ain't it?

**The three "ghosts": **I originally got the idea for OiaL by thinking one night, "Hey, somebody needs to do an FF:U Christmas Carol". I started wondering about the setup. The obvious person to guilt would be Kaze, but I like being original, so I decided on Lisa, and tried to think up a scenario. The idea just sort of evolved from there, becoming much more mature and suited to the FF:U world. However, the idea of three spirits who haunted the main character just sort of stuck...

**Aura: **I chose Aura as the first spirit specifically to antagonize Lisa. Although she's portrayed as a more retiring, damsel-in-distress girl in the dubbed, I tend to characterize her as the strong-willed young woman we meet in the subbed version of FF:U (who yells at Kaze when he won't accept her sacrifice). I mean, come _on, _she's _Kaze's _little sister. She lived through eighteen years of Rock-boy for a big brother... she has to have strength of personality, or she would've gone insane by the time Chaos attacked Windaria. Although she has affection towards Kaze, she tends to be pretty hostile to other people, _especially _those who might take him away from her (i.e. Lisa, who I think Aura thinks is a Mary-Sue or something...).

Also, at that point of Lisa's "awakening" in OiaL, nothing short of shock and a good tongue-lashing would've gotten through to her. If she'd received sympathy, she would've just closed it out and ignored the vital question posed to her. (Also, this way I could play good-cop bad-cop with Aura and Kumo. XD Messing with people's heads is fun.)

**Rape: **This is a question I get from a lot of people, from readers to nosy social workers to parents and friends. Why do I write about rape? Because it's pretty much the worst thing I can imagine happening to someone. When you die, it's over. Your suffering has ended, and hopefully you're in a better place. But surviving rape means that your suffering continues. Sex is a very personal, intimate experience, which makes rape an _extremely _intimate violation. Victims find themselves feeling impure or somehow to blame for what's happened to them, although it isn't their fault. Unless they have someone to yank them out of the hole right away, they're usually sent into a downward spiral of depression, with little chance of recovery.

In addition, what happened to Lisa was also spouse abuse, which is downright creepy. In some places, domestic violence is still only prosecutable if the aggressor is actually caught in the act, because sometimes it's so hard to tell whether or not the violence itself was consentual or simply a petty ploy to punish an errant spouse. It should drive home how nasty Colin Byrne is.

**Kumo: **I chose Kumo as the second spirit to be the sympathizer. At that particular point in the story, Lisa needed a little rescuing, and as a nurturing, gentle character who also happens to be close to Kaze, Kumo was the perfect choice. (He's also my favorite character in FF:U, which was a good enough reason to include him on its own!) Kumo-chan is kind enough to take Lisa through the collapsed future without letting her snap; whenever she seemed to get to a danger point, he always tried to comfort her. In addition, he could show her that it wasn't just her fault--and precious few characters could've accomplished _that._

Besides, Lisa had already started to feel some friendly affection towards Kumo since about episode 24, and he already cared about her as the midgets' protector. She needed to see a familiar face... someone _she _could actually feel sympathy for, as well.

**Incest: **I know, I know, it bothers people, but Kiri and Kumo are a really cute couple, dammit! Depending on the pairing, incest can either be extremely disturbing or the sweetest thing ever. It all depends on character chemistry... and besides, who knows--as Kiri and Kumo come from their own world of Mystaria, the rules about what's acceptable may be a little different there.

Besides, there are a few vague implications in episode 18 that Kiri and Kumo were _way _closer than the average pair of siblings... and you may take that _any _way you want. (sulk) You don't see too many people calling their big brothers "Niisama"...

**Kiri: **Those who tried to figure out the meanings of Lisa's dreams in Chapter 8 probably looked at the Kiri segment and went "huh?". If I have to spell it out for you, I will, although you could also find the meaning behind it by uberanalyzing eppy 18 as I have done.

Unfortunately for FF:U audiences everywhere, no one but the writers know exactly what happened after Oscha rezzed Kiri through the use of necromancy. As previously stated, Kiri and Kumo have an unusually close relationship for brothers, and yet when Kiri shows up later in the episode, he's out for poor Kumo-chan's blood. There _has _to be some reason for this--obviously, Oscha is behind it, as a mind-controlling puppeteer. Kiri is too volatile to simply go along with something like a basic hypnosis technique (and one would think he'd have snapped out of it much sooner if that had been the case), so he was apparently forcefully coerced against his will, put under some powerful binding.

This would've worked much more effectively if Kiri had been put through something that could shatter his inner strength, leaving him vulnerable enough to succumb to Oscha's binding when it was placed on him.

You connect the dots.

Also, during his explanation of his resurrection later in the episode, Kiri claims that it was his driving need to prove his greater strength that brought him back to life, when watchers know what really happened. Why? Because it would cause Kumo more pain; also probably due to the effects of the binding. Who's interested in causing pain? Oscha (and Chaos).

Also, the sudden change in Kiri's personality at the end of the episode, while dying, indicates that Oscha's control has been removed. He once again speaks (thinks) affectionately to Kumo, placing his trust in his brother to destroy Chaos once and for all.

The whole incident makes Kumo snap a little. He's nowhere to be found during the Gaudium segments of episode 19, and his desire to protect and assist Kaze and the Comodeen becomes much more evident through his actions after that point. Although he's furious with the Earl and company (with good reason), he still has no idea that Kiri was forced to fight him against his will.

Hence Kiri's plea to Lisa in the dream.

Hopefully I haven't bored you too much here... you have your own brains, so you'll be able to figure out the rest on your own. (XD Yes, I do stuff like this for fun. I love it. Although it scares me how my analytical English classes have been invading my daily life... well, it's all in a day's work for an aspiring character designer...)

**Fabula: **Why choose Fabula as the third "spirit"? Because there had to be _someone _orchestrating the whole deal, and she's one of the few who's actually in a position to pull strings. Besides... and few enough know this, because they don't delve into her character... she _is _really powerful. And though we audience members have only seen her kind and patient moments, she can be truly scary when she's angry. Unlike Kumo-chan, Kiri-kun, and Rock-boy, when Fabula is _truly _angered, she gets _cold. _This was my first chance to be able to write her in that specific mood, and it was a lot of fun. Besides, Lisa needed to get yelled at.

I didn't get as much time as I would've liked to develop Fabula's character... those who want to see more of her should read Kokoro no Hanashi, one of my other (much longer) fics. She actually has a lead role there. (XD) But for OiaL, all I really needed was a powerful figure who could be both accusing and sympathizing towards Lisa... and would have enough dirt on her to feed to Kumo-chan and Aura. Heh.

**Touya and Dolwa: **These two are characters from After Spiral. Yes, all the information I have on them in this story _is _true... Dolwa (also phonetically translated as "Doruwa") Sorujatshi is the man who sent Lisa to observe the Hayakawas, as well as her personal friend and a teacher at Ai and Yu's middle school. However, he gets mixed up with Oscha and Herba in AS for some reason... which I don't know, as I haven't _read _the damn thing. Well, much of it. And all I have is a shitty Babblefish translation of the first chapter. Almost all this information was gotten from Yersi-chan. Touya is Yu's best friend, who has a crush on Ai. They _do _exist, and also star in Shadowgoddess' ficlet, FF:U Darkness Within. (Although Dolwa is the bad guy there.)

**Lisa's dreams: **They add a little depth to the story and provide a glimpse into Kiri, Kumo, and Kaze's lives before and during FF:U. Besides, they were an important clue to the third "ghost"'s identity... No, I will not decipher any more of them for you, as you've got your own brain. So there nyeh.

**Lisa's _other _dreams: **They added depth to Kaze and Lisa's relationship. Plus, they kept all the Heartshippers happy. (XD) Aw, come on, who doesn't get enjoyment out of lemon-limey goodness between their favorite couple? (Now, if only some other rabid Cloudshipper would start writing lemons besides me... sigh...) Seriously, though, you wouldn't have seen Lisa's dilemma unless you'd gotten that background information about how exactly they'd fallen for each other and whatnot.

**Hougekiju: **Aura's last name in all my fics is also the name of Kaze's final summon, the Bahamut-class gun dragon. It sort of fits, seeing as it takes her Soil-type to help summon it... Literally translated, "Hougekiju" means "Gun Dragon Summon".

**Kansha shimasu! I love you all! See you next year in Jerusalem... or if not, in the next fanfic of mine you pick up... (XD)**


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